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A new mudskipper species was named in 1995 by Lee et. al. as Periophthalmus magnuspinnatus. We recently found out that maybe this species has been living in China for years. At the first sight at the name, it’s hard to discover the problem, actually at first, I thought it’s “magnu-spinnatus” (with a very rare connecting vowel). Then later, Gian told me that this name means “magnus pinnatus (big, finned)”, then I realized the problem at once. The author simply combined these two words together instead of compounding them in the latin manner. The correct way of combining such a word is to use a connecting vowel. It’s customed to use “i” for latin stems, thus the name should’ve been “magnipinnatus“.

There’s no problem regarding the grammar, it’s definitely wrong. However, does the zoological code allow us to correct this name? We posted a question on the ICZN mailing list, and replies flooded in.

Technorati Tags: code, Goby, Latin, nomenclature

I’ve been always interested in evolutional and phynogenic studies, I read some ABCs before I went to bed on that last night, and woke up this morning thinking, “why not try it out myself”?

Well, you know, a cladogram is something you see on a biology text book that shows how human evolves from ancient apes, and how we’re related to modern ones. Watching a well and carefully constructed cladogram is a great pleasure, because it reveals the evolutionary events happend millions of years ago. However, constructing it is another story, it appears to be very simple and actually the basic principle is simple. But there’re still many problem to be solved before we can make a reasonable tree, and conclude something base on it. The biggest headache may be choosing the gene. Luckily, many scientists have done lots of experiments to prove that using mitochonrion genes for phylogenetic purpose usually works because they change fast enough to see the difference between species from a genus, and conserved enough to see their common ancester. Plus it is mainly materinherited.

Forget about the aboves, I just wanna try out some softwares that I may be using in the future. So, I visited GenBank, and fetched some published mtDNA sequences. The gene I chose was the one encodes cytochrome b, it’s totally random, I don’t know which to use actually. I collected sequence information for 10 species, 9 of which are gobies(Gobiidae) and one Perciform Aspasma minima was chosen as outgroup. Again, I don’t have tons of theory to choose this one, I just want to see how things would turn out.

Next, I need a program to align the sequences and compute the tree. After trying out some of the many, I find phyloWIN easy to use and also powerful. The data file is attached in this blog, you can download it here. With just several clicks, a tree is drawn. The result turns out satisfying, which reflects the some main groups in Gobiidae.

Technorati Tags: genbank, Goby, phylogeny

Just back from the psycological experiment, the last one of this semester. Our task today is to open a rabbit’s skull(craniotomy) and stimulate different areas on the pallium. The rabbit was first anaesthesized, and we cut the head skin open. After that, we use a driller to drill two holes in the skull top, then the holes were extended.

I think such experiments are really cruel, because the animal must not be anaesthesized too deeply, or it may not respond to the stimulation. Our rabbit struggled several times, thus we added more dose of anaesthestic. But then, as expected, it didn’t have obvious responses. All we can record was the pallia controlling the lower jaw and the neck.

Lindera was very upset about the result, and she insisted trying over and over again. The rabbit was waking up from anaesthesia, so I decided it’s time to let it go. It’s not easy to kill an animal, but I knew that’s the only way to release it from pain. So I injected air to the ear’s vain, it died quickly.

We should honor these animals which sacrifice themselves for scientific studies. At least, as a biology student, we must respect the ethics of using experimental animals. And we must do our best to minimize the pain during experiment, and truely respect them from our hearts.

Technorati Tags: ethic, experiment, rabbit

Today when I went to feed the fish, I couldn’t find the Acentrogobius caninus in the big tank. I’m worried because last time when I fed them, the A. caninus swam away from a big piece of shrimp meat! I thought at first it’s too full, but usually this doesn’t happen twice. When I turned over the box I put in as shelter, and there it is, laying still on its one side, dead. I took it out and examined a bit, it seems that it has been dead for some time, at least for one day. The weired thing is that it has some pink color on its eye bow and snout, dunno why.

The Amoya didn’t feed much either, she (just found out) was just picking here and there for some left-outs. Her shining spots seem to fade a lot these days and her tail become shorter and rounded. What surprised me was that it’s pregnant, the yellow eggs fill her belly. For a goby, it means the most important moment in her life, to pass on her genes. And after doing so, according to exsisting report, she will leave the world. Sadly, there’s no more males survive in our tank, she’s not possible to finish her task. But what we hope for is that she may live longer, even as long as a year. We’ll see.

Oh, yeah, Reza kinda praised us this morning for the presentation of Windsor castle and Buckingham Palace in the English class. But I don’t think I’d done my best yet.

Technorati Tags: Acentrogobius, Amoya, die, Goby

The status for Amoya brevirostris is long being uncertain, partly due to lack of coloration information. It seems that the holotype inspected by Gther( Gobius brevirostris Gther, BMNH 2005.10.3.1) had lost its coloration when it reached the researcher, because in the original description, the author only mentioned: Uniform brownish-olive(in spirits); the second dorsal with series of brown dots; caudal, anal, and ventral with the margins blackish..

Such incomplete description in coloration is not sufficient to identify this sp. effectively, it’s easy to confuse it with sibling sp.. Unfortunately, no known effort has been made to find out the actual color of this fish in the last 80 years. Many books, keys still use more or less the same description of coloration of Gther’s. And that’s why we have much trouble looking up this colorful creature in our books when we first found it, because they all say that the fish is “plain in color, with a obscure thick dark line through the lateral”.

Instead of Ctenogobius brevirostris in our key, we accidentally followed the key to Oligolepis moloanus at first. When I soon found out the valid name is Amoya moloanus, and found a colored picture of it. At the first sight, I almost believe we’re right about it. Not just because they have almost the same body outline, but also because both our specimen and A. moloanus has the eye-catching 8 shining spots along the body side. And, interestingly, in spite of the shape, the color pattern of the spots are very similar – metalic blue-green with red margin. The only difference I noticed was that A. moloanus has a clear black line from below eye to the upper mouth base. I asked Helen Larson about it, she doesn’t know the exact sp., but she did think the specimen we’d got was very close to A. moloanus. Then she forwarded my email to Zeehan, who’s revising Acentrogobius et Amoya.

During those days, I also looked up the internet for goby photos, and again accidentally came to a website that shows the type specimen of Ctenogobius chusanensis from China. It looks like our specimen too! I at once sensed they should be very close related. Of course, just a guess, before examing the specimen or have look into any literature, I could not decide.

Until recently, I read a paper about the name revision for C. chusanensis (Zhao Shenglong et Zhong Junsheng) . The author suggested to move this sp. from Ctenogobius from Acentrogobius after comparing it to Amoya brevirostris and Acentrogobius moloanus(syn. of Amoya moloanus). It proves that I’m not the only person who notices the similarities between these 3 spp.. However, other authors have already moved both A. chusanensis and A. moloanus into Amoya. With our description of coloration for A. brevirostris, this speciei status should be sure. It’s very close related to Amoya chusanensis, with similar coloration, and sex differences. I even doubt they could be synonyms, or assigned as subspecies. I’m not sure about A. moloanus, but it seems that this sp. is further away than the relationship between the previous two spp. according to their distribution and coloration.

Finally, I want to say that the countable features may not be very reliable to identify the spp. in this genus. Usually, the coloration works better if a fresh specimen is available.

Technorati Tags: Amoya brevirostris, Amoya chusanensis, Amoya moloanus, comparison, Goby, Web

Today, Yang brought back 2 new gobies from Jishan. Including 2 Oxyurichthys and a typical Oxuderces dentatus.

The Oxyurichthys fits O. ophthalmonema very well, because it has small antannae above the eyes, and a predorsal prominent line.

For the O. dentatus there’re more problems to be resolved. We actually already have lots of O. dentatus in the synonym Apocryptichthys sericus, which has more darker color. However, it’s the first time we discover a light color morph. I’ve sent an email to Gianluca, and still waiting for his reply.

Technorati Tags: found, Goby, new